Things for a Witch

MONDAY PUZZLE — Jay Kaskel takes us another step closer to the most boo-tiful day of the year with a puzzle about a stereotypical witch.

First Witch: When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.

— Macbeth, Act I, Scene 1

Today’s Theme

Four phrases are reinterpreted as things that might be in the life of a witch. For example, witches cast spells, so “Computer help for a witch?” would be SPELL CHECK. Similarly, WARTS AND ALL at 41A is “How one might be forced to accept a witch?” because a witch has at least one wart. (Practitioners of witchcraft, please do not write to me objecting to this. I know you do not have warts. We’re talking about the cartoon stereotype.)

Tricky Clues

61A: If you are knowledgeable about poetry, KEATS might have been a gimme. I had John DONNE at first, but I know enough about cooking to know that a “Stir-fry vessel” is not a WOD, it’s a WOK.

19D: We’re talking about slang for money here. “Bill worth 100 smackers” is a C SPOT, which must be very rare, since multitudes of relationship experts have written about trying to find it.

Constructor Notes

I originally set out to create a Halloween-themed puzzle that incorporated all the familiar characters associated with Halloween: witches, ghosts, skeletons, vampires and zombies. But the theme never felt tight enough. After a while, I settled on a witch/BROOM HILDA-themed puzzle and sent it off.

While Will liked the idea, he felt young solvers might not be familiar with the character. So not only did I have to replace BROOM HILDA at 58-Across, I had to do some serious re-cluing (CHARM SCHOOL, for example, was clued as “Educational institution attended by 58-Across?”)

Here’s where things got tricky. One of the original theme entries was WITCH HUNT, which meant I couldn’t use the word “witch” in the clues. “Educational institution attended by a Halloween broom-rider” just didn’t do the trick. It felt too forced. In the end, I simply dropped WITCH HUNT as an answer, and thankfully Will was O.K. with the puzzle having just four main fills.

As always, I can’t tell you how much of a treat it is to see one of my puzzles in The New York Times.